From Fear to Action

Threat Assessment and Containment

I want to continue along the line that I began in last Wednesday’s blog.  If not fear and hate, what should be our response to the dangers we see ahead for our national life? 

I suggest the lens of sober threat assessment, i.e. we must eliminate excessive emotion from both our evaluation and our choice of action. 

Fear, as I wrote, substitutes extreme certainty for careful judgement. I urge us all to feel deeply about the wrongs of present society, the suffering we see and the futures we fear. But when it comes to making battle choices, reckless and emotional hatred will result in even greater danger to our society than the threats we aim to limit. 

Mental toughness demands that we recognize the nature of our interests and assess the degree to which they are shared by many would be allies.  However much our emotions say demonize the enemy, and flawed judgement tells us we must do this to gain mass support, it is self-defeating.  We stoke the fire, not manage and control the blaze.

No matter how serious the threat, we must be coldly analytical, prepared for a long, hard, battle against forces that seem to rise from the deepest and most dangerous cervices of the human soul.

Threat analysis is the groundwork for threat prevention.  For both sides in this election, and I mean to speak to BOTH sides, victory for the other will bring a nrw and greater challenge, to continue the battle, to find effective ways to limit what harm the “winners” may do to our values, security and wellbeing.

The election will not mark an end.  It will be a beginning. Many of us believe that one side or the other, if they win, will do great harm to this land and its people. We need to be prepared for both winning and losing.  Too many of the voices I hear, enraged by “fear,” imply that somehow this will be a “final” battle.  It will not.

A more than two centuries struggle to harness the often-ruthless nature of human emotions to the equally powerful vision of a just and peaceful society and world.  That is the story of America.

Once touched by John Kennedy’s inaugural address, i cannot be released from its challenge. 

“Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need--not as a call to battle, though embattled we are-- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”